World News Headlines

World News Headlines....(21/10/08)

2008-10-21T03:51:00.000-07:00

U.N. says crisis to cost 20 million jobs

Twenty million jobs will disappear by the end of next year as a result of the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy, a United Nations agency said on Monday.
Construction, real estate, financial services, and the auto sector are most likely to be hit, according to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) estimate, which is based on International Monetary Fund projections for the world economy.
The toll on jobs could be even higher if IMF economic projections are cut, said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.
"We have to talk about the financial crisis in terms of what happens to people and what happens to jobs and enterprises," he told reporters.
Somavia said the ILO, which brings together governments, employers and workers, wanted to steer discussions about the resolving the crisis toward job creation and other steps to promote the "real economy."
"It would be tragic to respond to a sub-prime crisis with sub-prime policies," he said.
The ILO does not yet have a regional breakdown of projected job losses, which Somavia said would take global unemployment to 210 million in late 2009 from 190 million last year, the first time it has topped 200 million.
But countries with large domestic markets that do not depend heavily on exports would be able to weather the crisis better, he said, citing as an example China, where exports make up only 11 percent of the economy.

Iraqis Balk at a U.S. Troop Deal, but Can They Say Goodbye?

American and Iraqi governments had been inching toward a deal that would create a legal basis for the U.S. military to remain in Iraq once its U.N. mandate expires on Dec. 31. The draft version of the agreement — leaked earlier this month by the American side — also lays out a time line for U.S. withdrawal: American forces would leave Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June 2009 and be stationed on large bases until they're withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. Washington made further concession as well, allowing American soldiers to be subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction for crimes committed while off duty and off base.
But that wasn't enough to satisfy members of al-Maliki's United Iraq Alliance coalition, who have asked that negotiations be reopened. The problem may be less any one particular provision than it is the agreement itself. Despite the security gains achieved over the past year, most Iraqis want the foreign soldiers to leave — and with provincial elections scheduled for January of 2009, Iraqi politicians don't want their fingerprints on the document. Tellingly, the only politicians at Saturday's meeting of Iraq's security council who did voice full support for the proposed agreement were from the placid Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq — where, unlike in the rest of the country, the U.S. army is much loved but little seen.
Supporters of al-Maliki's coalition are particularly vulnerable to the public mood. The government has made little headway on the two issues most important to Iraqis: security and public services. Residents of Baghdad are lucky if they get one hour of electricity a day off the government grid — what's laughingly called "Maliki power." And though the country has the lowest levels of violence in four years, most Iraqis credit this to the American army's surge in Baghdad and to the Awakening councils and neighborhood patrols, which the government is busy dismantling now that they have served their purpose.
Still, it remains unlikely that Iraq's politicians will force the Americans to leave. After all, the country is run by a class of leaders who have come to power thanks to U.S.-sponsored democratic elections, which created power blocs composed of ethnic and sectarian parties. Except for a few politicians with reputations or family names that predated the American invasion, these are men that most Iraqis don't recognize as their leaders, whose backgrounds are sketchy, and whose hands have been bloodied and bank accounts fattened by the past few years of civil war. Even al-Maliki's bold move in Basra against al-Sadr's Mahdi Army faltered until American soldiers came to the rescue. Iraq won't let the Yankees go home just yet.

World News

2008-10-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Cuba's first Russian Orthodox cathedral opens

Cuba's first Russian Orthodox cathedral was consecrated Sunday amid church bells, liturgical chants and the presence of President Raul Castro, in a sign of goodwill toward the island's former chief benefacto. Russian diplomats and members of Cuba's dwindling Russian community crowded into the whitewashed seaside cathedral, which is topped by a gleaming
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gold dome.Dressed in a dark and tie, Castro attended the opening but left before the liturgical service that followed. His good relations with Russian officials date to Soviet times, and his older brother Fidel attended the consecration of a nearby Orthodox church for Greek and other non-Russian Orthodox Christians in 2004.The new Our Lady of Kazan cathedral has been welcomed by many in Cuba's Russian community, which has dwindled to several hundred as most returned home following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Tens of thousands of Russian technicians and military officers lived in Cuba before the Soviet Union dissolved.

Iraqis March in Baghdad to Protest Security Pact

Followers of the anti-American cleric took to the streets on Saturday in a demonstration against the proposed security agreement between the American and Iraqi government being reviewed by Iraqi political leaders.

US campaign heats up with 2 weeks to go

The Times' profile of Cindy McCain delves into the background of the millionaire beer heiress, married to the Republican Arizona senator for more than 30 years.
McCain's campaign fired back immediately, describing the profile as "gutter journalism at its worst" and a "barrage of petty and personal attacks".
The article noted the candidate's spouse had a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, she "endured several miscarriages alone" while her husband worked in Washington, and she was "caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organisation to feed her addiction to painkillers".
The article is a "black mark on the record of a paper that was once widely respected, but is now little more than a propaganda organ for the Democratic party," McCain's campaign said.
"The New York Times has stooped lower than this campaign ever imagined possible in an attempt to discredit a woman whose only apparent sin is being married to the man that would oppose that paper's preferred candidate, (Democrat) Barack Obama."
Cindy McCain, 54, is the chairwoman of Hensley & Company, Arizona's foremost beer distribution company worth an estimated tens of millions of dollars.
In a confession to Newsweek magazine she admitted drug use in the wake of the Keating scandal that rocked Washington in the late 1980s, in which she was the sole Senate spouse to be implicated.
"The pills made me feel euphoric and free," she wrote in an essay.
Cindy McCain has been drafted into her husband's campaign in recent weeks and was due to tour Pennsylvania by bus this weekend in a bid to stem McCain's slide in the polls against his Democratic rival.
Democrats: 'False crusade'
Meanwhile, Obama's campaign accused Republicans of using a false crusade against voter fraud to suppress legitimate votes.
The Obama campaign's top lawyer, Bob Bauer, accused Republicans on Saturday of recklessly "plotting" to suppress legitimate votes and to "sow confusion and harass voters and complicate the process for millions of Americans".
An estimated nine million new voters have registered for the hotly contested presidential election, and the Obama camp says Democratic registrations are outpacing Republican ones by four to one.
The McCain campaign contends that an untold number of those registration forms are false and warned that illegally cast ballots could alter the results of the election and undermine the public's faith in democracy.
Republicans have launched a slew of lawsuits aimed at preventing false ballots from being cast, the most high-profile an attempt to challenge as many as 200,000 of the more than 600,000 new registrations submitted in the battleground state of Ohio.
That challenge was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling on Saturday.
Republicans cited investigations into whether liberal-leaning community organisation ACORN had submitted false voter registrations as proof of "rampant" and widespread fraud, which McCain said on Wednesday could be "destroying the fabric of democracy".
The McCain campaign dismissed Bauer's accusations as an "absurd" attempt to "criminalise political discourse".
"In case Senator Obama's lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls 'recent partisan Republican activities' are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates," spokesman Ben Porritt said.
Latest poll
Gallup's latest national tracking poll of registered voters had Obama at 50 per cent to 43 per cent for McCain.
Polls of battleground states by CNN and Time on Wednesday showed Obama up five points among registered voters in Colorado, by eight in Florida, by three in Missouri and by a yawning 10 points in Virginia.
Obama is set to address a rally in St Louis, Missouri, on Saturday afternoon, while McCain has events scheduled in North Carolina and Virginia.

World News Headlines...(16/10/08)

2008-10-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

Charity Says 900 Million Starving

xfam's Double Edged Prices report found 967 million people were now officially living below the hunger line, because of the high cost of food.

It said there had been a 300% rise in the cost of wheat in Guatemala, a 100% increase in the price of flour and a doubling of the cost of rice in Cambodia and the Philippines in the past year.

Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking said the effects of the price rises were "devastating".

The charity said 1.7 million people in Tajikistan - one-third of the rural population of the country - is now classed as food insecure, after crops were devastated by a severe winter, followed by a hot spring and a plague of locusts.

In Honduras, food consumption among the poorest families has reduced by 8%, and in Cambodia 1.7 million people are facing starvation.

According to CARE International's figures, 6.4 million people in Ethiopia are in need of emergency food aid, and in Somalia half of the population is starving.

A combination of drought, conflict and rising food prices has left millions of people in the area facing starvation.

An emergency meeting of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome earlier this year pledged 12.3 billion US dollars to help tackle the world food crisis, but only one billion US dollars has been paid out from the fund so far, Oxfam said.

Charities condemned the slow response to the growing crisis, comparing it unfavourably with action taken against the banking crisis.

Ms Stocking said the contrast was "shocking", as the charity launched a £15 million appeal to help tackle the crisis.

"The international community has failed to organise itself to respond adequately to this," she said.

"Developing countries are being bombarded with with different initiatives and asked to produce multiple plans for different donors. We need to see one co-ordinated international response," she said.

Thai, Cambodian officials hold peace talks

Thai and Cambodian troops faced off at a disputed border as military officials held urgent peace talks Thursday, a day after a deadly gunbattle near an 11th-century temple sparked fears of war.

Thousands of Cambodian villagers living near the hilltop Preah Vihear temple fled their homes, fearing more violence. Families packed rice, clothes and chickens into cars, pickup trucks and carts pulled by motorized plowing machines, forming long convoys heading away from the border zone.

Senior military officials from the two neighboring Southeast Asian nations met in Thailand's Sisaket province, just across the border from Cambodia, to discuss the previous day's clash, which killed at least two Cambodian soldiers and wounded 10 from both sides.

To fight Taliban, US eyes Afghan tribes

Such a policy promises great risk and reward. Done carelessly, it could unleash the tribal and ethnic forces that led to civil war in the early 1990s, warns tribal leader Mr. Zahir, as well as analysts. Yet his experience – and that of aid agencies and local law-enforcement officials – suggests that tribal elders can often deliver results that the government alone cannot.

In a Pentagon briefing last week the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, said: "It seems to me that, with the lead of the government of Afghanistan, engaging those tribes and connecting them to governance – whether it's at the provincial level or the district level – seems to be a smart thing to do to assist with the security of a huge country."

World News Headlines.....(16/10/08)

2008-10-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Asian stocks tumble after Wall Street sell-off

Asian stocks tumbled Thursday, with Tokyo's market plunging 10 percent, after another dive on Wall Street as worse-than-expected data about the U.S. economy heightened fears of a global recession.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average slid 906 points, or 9.5 percent, to 8,641, after earlier falling as much as 10.3percent.

Hong Kong's key index lost 1,212.7 points, or 7.6 percent, to 14,785.6. South Korea's Kospi was down 8.4 percent, Australia's benchmark was off almost 7 percent and Singapore's index lost about 6 percent.

Investors were unnerved by U.S. data showing the country's retail sales fell 1.2 percent in September, almost double the 0.7 percent decline analysts expected clear evidence that consumer spending, which accounts more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, was weakening.

FDIC Chief Raps Rescue for Helping Banks Over Homeowners

The government plan will help stabilize financial markets but it doesn't do enough to address home foreclosures, the root of the crisis, she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

"Why there's been such a political focus on making sure we're not unduly helping borrowers but then we're providing all this massive assistance at the institutional level, I don't understand it," she said. "It's been a frustration for me."

Ms. Bair didn't single out government officials or leaders, but her criticisms brushed on decisions made by both the Bush administration and Congress. For example, she described painstaking efforts made by lawmakers in crafting the federal Hope for Homeowners program to make sure it limited resale profits for borrowers who received affordable home loans.

Ms. Bair, who was nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate in 2006, has frequently said government and industry efforts to prevent foreclosures aren't effective enough. She has long defended her focus on consumer protection as a key role for the FDIC, which is charged with protecting bank deposits.

World News Headline

2008-10-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

'Too fat to die' murderer is executed

A double murderer who claimed he was too fat to be safely executed was put to death by lethal injection today.
Richard Cooey, 5ft 7ins and 19 stones, had tried to escape his sentence by claiming his obesity would cause difficulty in finding suitable veins for the shots.
Cooey ,41, who killed two Ohio university students in 1986, lost a final appeal earlier today to the US Supreme Court.
Cooey and a then-17-year-old accomplice were convicted of the murders of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery.
The men had been throwing concrete slabs off a bridge on to a main road and one of them struck Ms Offredo's car.
Pretending to "rescue" the women, Cooey and Clinton Dickens took the victims to a remote field.
They were subjected to a three-and-a-half-hours of rape, torture, stabbing, and fatal bludgeoning. Cooey carved an "X" into the stomachs of both women.
Each man blamed the other for delivering the fatal blows, but both were convicted of murder. Dickens received a life sentence because of his age.
Cooey's argument also had been rejected by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati and the Ohio Supreme Court, with both courts ruling that he missed a deadline for filing appeals.
A prisons spokeswoman said Cooey received a pre-execution exam early today and was cleared.
He walked into the death chamber at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville at at 10.15am and was strapped onto a trolley.
"You (expletive) haven't paid any attention to anything I've said in the last 22 1/2 years, why would anyone pay any attention to anything I've had to say now," Cooey said looking at the ceiling. He made no other comment.
Cooey tapped the fingers of his left hand several times before he died.
His lawyers had argued that Cooey was 75 pounds heavier than when he went to death row - the result of prison food and 23-hour-a-day confinement.
The last Ohio inmate to be executed was Christopher Newton - who was similar in size to Cooey - in May 2007. The execution team had trouble putting needles in his arm, which delayed his execution nearly two hours. There were similar problems in the execution of another inmate in 2006.

Thousands of Christians flee violence in Iraq

US crisis freezes China sovereign funds

Stable Investment Corp, which is registered at the same address as the CIC office in Beijing and shares employees with the fund according to the reports, held 11.1 per cent of Reserve Primary’s shares, or around $5.4bn worth, at the start of September.
A CIC spokesperson declined to comment on ”market rumours” and refused to confirm that Stable Investment Corp, was a subsidiary of the fund.
News of yet another disastrous investment by the sovereign wealth fund is likely to trigger public outrage and further strengthen a political backlash in China, where the government has refused to allow any major offshore financial sector investments this year.
CIC, which was established just over a year ago, invested $3bn in US private equity firm Blackstone and more than $5bn in Morgan Stanley last year, only to watch their shares drop more than 70 per cent since.
Until recently many investors considered money market funds to be almost as safe as bank accounts and before Reserve Primary, the oldest such fund in the US, only one small money market fund had ever ”broken the buck” by dropping below $1.
Reserve Primary’s loss was triggered on September 16 when it was forced to value $785m worth of Lehman Brothers debt securities at zero in the wake of the investment bank filing for bankruptcy protection.
The fund was inundated with withdrawal requests and ended up releasing $10bn at $1 per share before its shares dropped to 97 cents and it froze redemptions, according to Bloomberg.
It is now in the process of liquidating its assets and was expected to make an initial distribution of $20bn to remaining investors on Monday, according to reports.
The problem at Reserve Primary caused panic among investors and within a few days they had pulled more than $400bn from money market funds and other short term funds, such as prime funds.
Stable Investment, the CIC subsidiary, has also invested around $5.9bn in three other money market funds, according to documents filed with the SEC, Bloomberg reported.
That includes $2.1bn in the Invesco Aim Liquid Assets Portfolio, $2.3bn in the JPMorgan Prime Money Market Fund and $1.5bn in Deutsche Asset Management’s DWS Money Market Trust.

World News Headline

2008-10-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Asian markets continue rally

Asian stock markets have rallied for a second straight day following pledges by Western governments to give cash to national banks under strain from the global financial crisis.
Japan's Nikkei index closed 14.15 per cent up on Tuesday, its biggest-ever gain in a single day's trading.
Tuesday's gains erased most of the losses the Nikkei took on Friday and went some way towards reversing the 24 per cent plunge it has suffered over the course of the week.
The Nikkei surge came as Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan's finance minister, said the government was ready to offer funds to crumbling financial institutions around the world.
Nakagawa did not give details on Tuesday but said Japan was prepared to contribute to any IMF-led rescue effort.
Australian shares were also impressive, with the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index leaping almost six per cent before paring some gains, but still extending the 5.6 per cent rise it made on Monday - its biggest one-day percentage gain in 11 years.
The Australian government unveiled a A$10.4bn ($7.3bn) emergency stimulus package on Tuesday to guard the country's economy from a global recession.
The move to make one-off state payments to low-income earners and pensioners came two days after the government guaranteed all bank deposits for three years.
It also made wholesale funding to Australian banks to protect them from the fallout from the global credit crisis.

Sex Scandal Shakes Race for Congress in Florida

The congressman, Tim Mahoney, a Democrat, agreed to a $121,000 settlement with a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, two Democratic staff members who have been briefed on the settlement said.
The revelation, first reported by ABC News, could cost Mr. Mahoney his House seat. His South Florida district is conservative, and he was already in one of the most competitive races involving an incumbent Democrat.
Mr. Mahoney was elected two years ago after the resignation of Representative Foley, a Republican, whose lewd Internet messages to Congressional pages created a national outrage.
Without denying the accusations or explaining how he might benefit from an ethics investigation, Mr. Mahoney said the truth would vindicate him.
“While these allegations are based on hearsay, I believe that my constituents need a full accounting,” Mr. Mahoney said in a written statement. “As such, I have requested the House Ethics Committee to review these allegations.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi also called Monday for a House ethics inquiry.
The money, which did not come from campaign funds, was paid as part of a severance package to the aide, Patricia Allen, after she was fired, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mahoney said.
Mr. Mahoney’s wife was aware of the affair and the legal agreement involving Ms. Allen’s dismissal, two Democratic staff members said.
That agreement included a $61,000 severance payment, a $60,000 payment for legal fees and an agreement by Ms. Allen not to join any other campaign for at least a year, the staff members said. They said the agreement also involved a promise to Ms. Allen of a job at Fletcher Rowley Chao Riddle, a Nashville firm that handled Mr. Mahoney’s advertising.
On Monday, the company said that it was severing all ties with Mr. Mahoney’s campaign and that it had no knowledge of the promises to Ms. Allen for employment.
The affair began in 2006, when Mr. Mahoney was running for Congress, Democratic staff members said. Mr. Mahoney first met Ms. Allen at a campaign stop and later arranged for her to volunteer for the campaign, the Congressional aides said.
Friends of Ms. Allen told ABC that she had sought to break off the affair when she learned that Mr. Mahoney was involved in other extramarital relationships.
Mr. Mahoney fired Ms. Allen in January 2008, and she began legal proceedings in February that concluded with a settlement in March, Democratic staff members briefed on the matter said.
“You work at my pleasure,” Mr. Mahoney told Ms. Allen in a Jan. 20 telephone call that was recorded and played for Mr. Mahoney’s employees. “If you do the job that I think you should do, you get to keep your job. Whenever I don’t feel like you’re doing your job, then you lose your job. And guess what: The only person that matters is guess who? Me.”
In 2007, rumors began spreading on Capitol Hill that Mr. Mahoney was having an affair. Representative of Illinois, one of several senior Democrats who heard the rumors, approached Mr. Mahoney to discuss the matter.
“Congressman Emanuel confronted Congressman Mahoney, told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly and appropriately, and urged him to do so,” said Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. “They had no further conversations on this topic.”
Mr. Mahoney is facing Tom Rooney, a lawyer, who was trailing Mr. Mahoney by about seven percentage points in a September poll.

World News Headline....(30/09/08)

2008-09-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Shoot-out between Somali pirates on a hijacked cargo ship loaded..

The maritime group's Andrew Mwangura told the BBC three men where shot in a row over tactics.Pirates seized the Ukrainian ship last week and have demanded a $20m (£11m) ransom to release it.Mr Mwangura said the situation is very tense with the ship, the Faina, surrounded by US navy vessels.

US navy spokesman Lt Nathan Christensen said on Monday that destroyers and cruisers has been deployed within 10 miles (16kms) of the hijacked ship.

US failure hits European shares..

European share indexes have been volatile in early trading after a US financial rescue plan failed to gain Congressional backing.

With the US House of Representatives rejecting the $700bn (£380bn) rescue deal, the UK's FTSE 100 fell as much as 3% before recovering to down 0.4%.Asian stocks have already seen big declines in Tuesday trading. Wall Street's Dow Jones index saw its biggest one-day points fall in history on Monday after the deal was rejected.

Scores die in India temple crush...

Officials told the BBC that at least 150 more were injured in the incident at the Chamunda Devi temple in Jodhpur.A wall near the temple is said to have collapsed, causing panic among thousands of gathered devotees.There have been a number of deadly stampedes in India's temples recently - last month 140 people were killed in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh. Before dawn, thousands of people had made their way to the hill-top temple in a huge 15th Century fort overlooking Jodhpur.

Ecuadoran president cheers 'crushing' win...

Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa urged his opponents Monday to join his efforts to build a more just society, saying the overwhelming victory of his constitutional referendum gives him a broad mandate.

World News Headlines

2008-09-28T10:12:00.001-07:00

Twin car bombing in western Baghdad kills 13...(28/09/08)

BAGHDAD - Two car bombs killed 13 people and wounded 37 doing evening shopping Sunday in mainly Shiite Muslim areas of western Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

The blasts occurred about 5:30 p.m., shortly before the daily meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast observed by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan.

Car bombs and other attacks have frequently targeted Iraqis during Ramadan as insurgents try to chip away at recent security gains that have driven violence to its lowest levels in more than four years.

World News Headlines

2008-09-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Chinese Astronauts Return Safely...(28/09/08)

SHANGHAI — Three Chinese astronauts returned safely to earth in their space capsule late Sunday afternoon after spending nearly three days in low earth orbit and completing the nation’s first spacewalk, according to Chinese state television.

The re-entry capsule of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft floated down by parachute and landed on the grasslands of north China at 5:37 p.m. Beijing time. The capsule was located about ten minutes later by a search and rescue team, which helped the three astronauts climb out.

The landing was shown on national television and the three astronauts appeared relatively well. After emerging from a cramped, round capsule, they sat on what looked like lawn chairs, waved to the cameras and spoke briefly.

"It was a glorious mission, full of challenges but the result is perfect," one of the astronauts, Zhai Zhigang, said after the landing, according to the state-run news media.

China called its third manned space mission a complete success and a "major breakthrough" for the country’s space program, which hopes to establish a space station and to eventually send a man to the moon.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Zhai completed the nation’s first space walk, floating above an orbital module and waving a small Chinese flag.

Beijing sees the space program as a major yardstick of the country’s economic and technological development, and also a means to strengthening the country’s image at home and abroad.

China, which has spent billions of dollars building up its space program over the past decade, is only the third country, after Russia and the United States, to send humans into space with its own space ship.